Bayesian detection of unmodeled bursts of gravitational waves
Abstract
The data analysis problem of coherently searching for unmodeled gravitational-wave bursts in the data generated by a global network of gravitational-wave observatories has been at the center of research for almost two decades. As data from these detectors are starting to be analyzed, a renewed interest in this problem has been sparked. A Bayesian approach to the problem of coherently searching for gravitational wave bursts with a network of ground-based interferometers is presented here. We demonstrate how to systematically incorporate prior information on the burst signal and its source into the analysis. This information may range from the very minimal, such as best-guess durations, bandwidths or polarization content, to complete prior knowledge of the signal waveforms and the distribution of sources through spacetime. We show that this comprehensive Bayesian formulation contains several previously proposed detection statistics as special limiting cases, and demonstrate that it outperforms them.
Additional Information
Copyright © Institute of Physics and IOP Publishing Limited 2009. Received 8 December 2008, in final form 3 June 2009. Published 21 July 2009. Print publication: Issue 15 (7 August 2009). We would like to thank Shourov Chatterji, Albert Lazzarini, Soumya Mohanty, Andrew Moylan, Malik Rakhmanov and Graham Woan for useful discussions and valuable comments on the manuscript. This work was performed under partial funding from the following NSF grants PHY-0107417, 0140369, 0239735, 0244902, 0300609 and INT-0138459. AS was supported by the Australian Research Council and the LIGO Visitors Program. For MT, the research was also performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. MT was supported under research task 05-BEFS05-0014. PS was supported in part by STFC grant PP/F001096/1. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under co-operative agreement PHY-0107417. This document has been assigned LIGO Laboratory document number LIGO-P070114-00-Z.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 15574
- DOI
- 10.1088/0264-9381/26/15/155017
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20090903-115201245
- PHY-0107417
- NSF
- PHY-0140369
- NSF
- PHY-0239735
- NSF
- PHY-0244902
- NSF
- PHY-0300609
- NSF
- INT-0138459
- NSF
- Australian Research Council
- LIGO Visitors Program
- 05-BEFS05-0014
- NASA
- PP/F001096/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- PHY-0107417
- NSF
- Created
-
2009-09-08Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2022-07-12Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Other Numbering System Name
- LIGO Document Number
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- LIGO-P070114-00-Z